Runaway
by AngelCeleste85
Summary: Erik's POV, some little time after Christine takes her leave of Erik for the last time. Another angst-fest (Erik is so much fun to torment)!


Runaway By AngelCeleste85  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own "PTO." I never have, and never will, own Erik, Raoul, Christine, or any of the other characters that appear in other authors' versions of the story of the Phantom of the Opera (no matter how much I wish I did). The only things I can make any claim to are the workings of my own imagination with the material that other artists have given to me in their music and their stories, and the occasional incidental characters that truly *are* mine. Therefore I am not making any money off of this in any way, shape or form!  
  
Blame: I have no idea. Melpomene had a strong hand in this, I know that.  
  
Setting: Shortly after Christine takes her final leave of Erik. This does not argue with either the Leroux or the ALW version of PTO, so far as I know though the Daroga is mentioned once. All of this is from Erik's POV.  
  
Spoilers/Warnings: Angst. Angst, angst, angst and more angst. When that's through there's more angst. There are a couple of awful puns in there. Did I mention angst? Hope you enjoy this.  
  
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Runaway By AngelCeleste85  
  
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Christine, Christine...  
  
I don't expect you to understand. I barely understand it myself.  
  
Maybe this is one of those things that are almost beyond all comprehension anyway. But maybe you'll understand one day.  
  
Oh, Christine, I drove you away. Not just to protect you from the oncoming lynch mob, or to protect you from myself. As much as your safety concerned me, and it always has, I was also trying to protect myself from you. I drove you in one direction and ran the other.  
  
I saw something in your eyes that night that scared me, a light of compassion. I've never seen it before, I don't know how to deal with it. And your compassion is not what I was looking for, anyway.  
  
Looking at your soft, tear-filled eyes staring back at me like the eyes of the fawns I used to watch at play in the fields around my childhood home, I had a vision of the future, the future that might have been if I had kept you by my side.  
  
I knew that you might, in time come to pity me, might even come love me as a brother. But you would never come to love or desire me in the way that I love and desire you: if you ever shared your body with me, it would be out some sense of obligation or (again) pity. That would destroy you, demolish all your self-respect, and I know your heart would not be in it. I couldn't let you.  
  
Beggars shouldn't be choosy, I know. But I had to love you enough to let you go. An early grave is no fit gift to give you, in exchange for what you gave to me. Head and heart, so often torn in different directions where you are concerned, spoke unanimously then. They do so again now.  
  
Run away, they say. You gave her a chance at a love that you would have otherwise denied her. Now give that love a chance to bloom for her. That is love, wanting someone else's happiness far and above your own.  
  
How can I help but follow them?  
  
I do not believe you realize, though with time and age you might and if you do you have my fullest sympathies, just how badly you have hurt me in the months we have had to become acquainted with one another. Most of those, you will never know, because you cannot comprehend some of them. The barbs that I, accustomed to reading between the lines, heard in the most innocent questions that you asked me. How the most innocuous motions captivated me. Your dancer's grace, your angel's voice - I did not call you *my* Angel of Music without cause! And so much more, things synthesized perfectly in you that drew me as inexorably as a magnet draws iron.  
  
You reminded me at all times of a fawn that I once found lying motionless in the grass, her mother had been shot dead not far away by some careless hunter who didn't realize she might have a little one by her side. The face that revolted everyone who ever saw it -yes, you included, Christine - didn't scare this little creature and I approached gently, so careful not to scare her, all afire with wonder...  
  
The little fawn, I raised as my own, but I was careful to try to keep it as wild as possible. A deer cannot live in a barn, and had the village known about my treasure there she would have been killed for the sole purpose of hurting me. No, she was my secret, my jealously-guarded secret, and I allowed myself to believe she would always stay with me.  
  
More fool I.  
  
On a warm summer day I walked out, the bottle of milk I'd stripped from the neighbors' cows in hand, to go find my little chèrie. I came across my little one cropping grass as though she had done so her whole life. That was when I knew I had to let her go: she was grown, she could survive in the world. I could only hurt her further. I did not go to the field again.  
  
You reminded me in so many ways of that little fawn, who opened old wounds and caused fresh ones without knowing or caring, no matter how many times she dropped her nose into my palm (she was always looking for salt or sugar anyway) or licked the drying tears off my face. All those wounds are catching up with me in a way that the many beatings and physical wounds I've taken in fifty years never have.  
  
Do you wonder if I have a conscience? Besides that of the Daroga, my self- appointed conscience, that is.  
  
The truth is, yes. I have come to regret every pain I have ever caused to another, every death by my hands or because of me. That was something the Daroga could never teach me, something you did - did you see how dangerous you are to me? Do you now? There are no pains I regret more than the ones I caused to you.  
  
But leave me some secrets, ma petite chèrie, my doe-eyed Angel of Music.  
  
I drove you away to protect us both from one another, drove you away and run the other direction.  
  
Who, then, can protect me from myself?  
  
I can see only one way to see that you are always safe from me, for the knowledge that you will be married to that ignorant pup burns in my heart. I can feel where you are, can even reach out an touch your mind no matter the distance between us. I do not pretend to understand it, but oh God, it is a torture beyond anything I ever devised for the pleasure of the Shah! I can feel that connection and it calls to me, you call to me without realizing, and I know that I must not interfere... there is only one way to protect us from one another, now.  
  
Believe, if you do not understand me now, for you will one day... As a magnet draws iron, so too do you draw me. You cannot help it any more than the magnet can help attracting the iron, and I cannot help being drawn to you though I would destroy you with my love.  
  
I can't let that happen.  
  
The water is very cold, but that is of no concern to me. If anything, that numbing cold is a relief. I cannot eat, I cannot sleep, I have no fire within me left to write music, it has all passed to my skin. I burn, I am burning alive, and I can find no rest or relief!  
  
There is a little current to the lake, it is an underground river that widens into a lake in this cavern where I've made my home. Perhaps it is a branch of the Seine though I've never been able to follow it. I can swim, but I choose not to.  
  
Christine, I loved you enough to let you go with a man that I cannot stand the thought of. I still do.  
  
So cool, welcoming. The water cools my fevered body, more intimate than any lover's caress. So this is the touch of Death... she is gentle. She cradles me to her breast like a mother holds her beloved newborn. She will not reject me, I can feel it.  
  
Please understand, somehow, that what I do now is for the best for all of us. I'm running away yet again, as I have so many times before in my life.  
  
Goodbye, Christine.  
  
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Phin.  
  
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Pheedback, please! 


End file.
